The Best Laid Plans

After screening her family drama The Ballad of Jack & Rose at the 2005 Woodstock Film Festival, Rebecca Miller decided to make a comedy. “There were not that many laughs, but they were appreciated,” the writer-director recalled this past September at the Toronto Film Festival. “I thought, ‘I want to do that more.’ ” It took her some time—she made another drama, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, in 2009—but this month, Miller’s inaugural comedy, Maggie’s Plan, will come out in theaters. Starring Greta Gerwig as Maggie and Ethan Hawke as John, her initial love interest, the film is a screwball comedy in the vein of Frank Capra, with love triangles and secret setups. While Gerwig is charming as the hapless Maggie, it is Miller’s longtime friend Julianne Moore who steals the show as John’s wife, the egotistical Danish academic Georgette. “I just really always wanted to work with [Moore] whenever I can,” Miller said in Toronto. “We created this part kind of together.”